Summit attendee Tony Romeo, principal of Strategic Dynamics and former Unilever marketer, suggests the industry needs more training and experience.

Tony Romeo is the principal of Strategic Dynamics, a consulting firm that works with companies to develop and implement business and marketing strategies to address an ever more complex marketplace. His clients have included major consumer goods and internet companies as well as a variety of smaller start-ups, both in the United States and in Europe. Romeo's experience includes more than 15 years with Unilever, where he held various senior positions in the United States and Europe. He was founder and chairman of Unilever's Interactive Brand Center, where he led the company's efforts to engage in the interactive space. Prior to that he served as head of corporate strategy for Unilever and guided the development of major new global initiatives. He has been a Professor at the University of Connecticut and London Business School, and is currently a Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, where he teaches Global Marketing. He holds a B.A. degree from the Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

iMedia: What's your current greatest challenge when it comes to marketing in general, and interactive marketing, specifically? How are you tackling it/them?

Tony Romeo: Better marketing training and bolder execution. Although many of our marketing leaders were trained and gained experience in the broadcast model, they have finally begun to embrace the potential of interactive. But as a relatively new medium, the quality of training and the breadth of experience in interactive is weak, especially in traditional companies. This has at least three consequences: 1) interactive is underweighted in the marketing mix; 2) the interactive tools chosen are often sub-optimal for the task at hand; and 3) execution is often weak and/or overly cautious.

We are still in the early phases of a marketing revolution. That should affect both our expectations and our actions. The futurist author Arthur C. Clarke talked about the response to revolutionary innovations as proceeding in four steps: 1) it's crazy; 2) it may be possible, but so what; 3) I said it was a good idea all along; 4) I thought of it first. Many traditional companies are still hovering around step two, the 'so what?' stage, with a belief that interactive marketing only matters at the margin. For example, it has not, and is unlikely to be, the saving solution to the problems of Ford and GM. Our goal as interactive marketers is to make interactive marketing matter more, to push it to the true limits of our capabilities, with the goal of leading more of our colleagues towards step four.

iMedia: With which online marketing tools (email, behavioral targeting, display advertising, et cetera) has your company experienced marketing success in recent months?

Romeo: Search has been a winner lately, and has attracted some first-timers online. In part this is due to the intuitive appeal of search-- what better time to reach out than when the consumer is searching out information about the category? We now need to build on this success. All the tools have a role to play. And over time, I expect the truly interactive tools, those that enable a dialogue with consumers, to gain in share and prominence.

iMedia: Online video is coming of age. Has it impacted your marketing yet? Do you plan to do more of it soon?

Romeo: Online video has always had a latent appeal. It was just waiting for technology to catch up. Yet much of that appeal was a residual from traditional thinking, a wish that the tools of TV could be taken online. Marketers have to show what's different about video online, and the good ones are doing that.

iMedia: Is there another brand you admire for how its agencies are using interactive media to either increase branding or sell it? If so, why and what have you learned from that brand? 

Romeo: Dove has done a great job overall-- but, hey, I have an historical bias.

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor for iMedia Connection.